Few more games you can try... 1) Tomb Raider 2) Rise of the Tomb Raider. 3) Batman: Arkham City 4) Inside 5) Limbo 6) Undertale 7) Civilization 6 8) Deus Ex 9) Bioshock 1 & 2 10) The Witcher 1 & 2 11) Undertale 12) Ori and the Blind Forest
If you do not have a gaming PC or console, but have an Apple Silicon Mac, give it a shot. I did it and found that more than 90% of my steam library runs on Crossover. Last year i ditched my Mid range PC and upgraded to a M2 Max 38 core and I can even do some 1440p or 4k gaming.
@@peterkilian9100 don't be silly. The scenario is almost never buying a MacBook to game. A lot of us use a $3-4000 MacBook already as a primary device and would like the option of playing games without having to spend another $3000 on something to game.
@@erikludwig5515 If you want to game as a hobby, you literally could not do worse than macOS. In that “scenario”, a MacBook makes no sense. The only people that genuinely buy a MacBook for 4k are either those who don’t care for games or morons. There is no middle ground, yet.
@@Neosyass Clearly ignoring a lot of context. Who says he thinks it's amazing that it can run those games, or more that it can do all this on 3 year old hardware that's still incredibly battery efficient. Dunno why there's always one of you in the comments. As if we've never seen your train of thought before, lol.
@@Neosyass find me a light weight, fanless, long battery life laptop that can game like MBA. I agree with windows PC, i have 14” M1 Pro MacBook pro and gaming PC too
Longtime Apple user (late 90's), and Apple employee from 2006-2016. This past year I bought a custom built gaming PC for my family room, but I'm still highly interested in what I could do with my M1 MacBook Air (16GB, thankfully). To date I've been using Steam Link with an 8BitDo controller to play Helldivers 2 in my room in bed after the kids are down. Discord streams the gameplay. Lots of fun this way. Thanks for putting this together, Andrew.
Not really a gamer here, but ever since owning the M1 MacBook Air, I had purchased Grid Legends and Lies of P. In your video entitled "30 BEST Mac Games on Steam!" you called Lies of P one of the best games of 2023. I am curious to hear your recommendation as it pertains to optimal settings for playback of this game on the M1 MacBook Air.
Here are few more games to try on Mac: - Borderlands 2 - Disco Elysium (runs really great) - Deus Ex: making Divided - Eve Online (perfectly smooth experience) - World of Warcraft (is a nice optimized one) - Kerbal Space Program - Arma 3 - Path of Exile - Pillars of Eternity 1-2 - Snowunner - X-Plane 12 - Life is Strange - Sleeping Dogs - Song of Conquest - Planetary Annihilation - Don't Starve Together - Bomber Crew - Desperados 3 - American Truck Simulator - Euro Truck Simulator - Terraria - Surviving Mars - Dota 2 - League of Legends - Company of Heroes 2 - Albion Online - Tabletop Simulator - Void Bastards - War Thunder - World of Tanks - World of Warships - Wargame: Red Dragon - Fishing Planet
Here's my Steam library of games that run great: My favorites: 1-Company of heroes 2 2- DAVE THE DIVER, it's great! 3-Disco Elysium, it's great! 4-Divinity Original Sin 5- Hades 6- Civilization VI 7-Slay the Spire 8- XCOM 2 Other Games: 1- Age of Wonders: Planetfall (found it boring, not played it much) 2- The binding of Isaac; Rebirth (great game, specially with a controller). 3- Bloons TD6, great game for casual fun! 4- Dead cells (great game, specially with a controller). 5- Desperados III (great reviews, haven't played it ) 6- Don't Starve, great game! 7- Frostpunk is a great game but fps drops a bit sometimes 8- INSCRYPTION, just great! 9- SLEEPING DOGS, great gta-like game with great graphics and stable performance. My point being, MacOs has some native games running great in steam.
No Man's Sky has multiple rendering issues specifically on macOS since the worlds update a few months ago (very distracting full-screen glare, settings being stuck on low despite the UI showing otherwise, missing tessellation, etc.) so I would not recommend that one on macOS sadly nowadays.
I noticed that Celeste starts experiencing serious frame rate drop issues on my M1 MacBook Air with 8GB of RAM after running for a short while, making it very hard to control, especially since the game needs to react immediately. I wonder if anyone else has encountered this problem. I am curious about whether it has something to do with the Rosetta 2 transition layer. Amazing video, btw!
It can be that you have background apps running, or maybe using Parallels desktop, or your system is throttling due to temperature. Also, try updading to macOS 15 Sequoia if you are on ondel os versions.
...you should have considered adding The base M1 iMac and Mac Mini in your title......if it runs on the base M1 MBA, it will run even more efficiency on those due to better cooling,
I don't know why no one is mentioning Lies of P, its one of the best games ever made and has a native port so I assume it should work on the base M1. I have a M1 Pro so cant say.
Could you make a video about the settings you use on your mac? Metro exodus (bought on steam if that makes any difference) is virtually unplayable on my base M2 macbook air, even on low game settings.
By the way, can you also compare M1 Max 14", M2 Pro 14" and M3 14" with 16GB in terms of gaming. They all have similar price points. I know it is a lot :))
Which emulator did u use for metro exodus? I tried via crossover and alot of stuttering and lagging. Im using M2 pro though. Should be better than the M1 air.
I’m selling my base m1 MacBook Air because my gaming pc has a 4th gen intel and a 1050ti gpu 😢 Little context: 2 years ago I buyed the M1 MBA because PC parts in that year are too expensive and this was the reason why I choose the MacBook but now I need better specs and storage, sadly I can’t upgrade anything in the MacBook so I thing I buy a MacBook Pro later the next year, I really love the Apple Silicon Mac’s
If you can play GTA offline despite the anti-cheat thing then can you play any football game like EA FC 25? I'm not interested in playing online. Just wanted to play career mode (which is offline). Have you heard about anyone getting it to work? I have a m2 air 16 RAM with the 10 core GPU
Don’t do it with MacBook Air! It’s not designed for consistent high game loads. This thing is capable but it’s boiling hot in games. You will butcher it fast this way. Games are for active cooling solutions only (mac mini/pro/ultra)
i know ppl love to tout gaming on a mba... but just don't do it. there is a reason gaming computers have thought-out cooling systems with fans or liquid. i had a mba m3... it got extremely hot just using any browser other than safari.... i can't imagine how hot it gets when running a game... not including playing a game for a few hours.... a sure fire way to prematurely kill a mba, that has minimal cooling, is to game on it. i mean.. to each their own. that said, i'll def try it on my mbp m3pro 16"... since it DOES have fans...
How did you get Overwatch 2 to run on Mac?! I tried to get it to work with both Crossover and Parallels on a M2 16gb MacBook Air and it basically wouldn't work
Does somebody know how to get Left 4 Dead 2 running with at least 60fps? I tried CrossOver but even on low settings the performance is barely playable.
I have the same m2 air 16 RAM and 512GB which comes with the 10 GPU cores instead of 8. Do you have a more curated list of games for it, since it performs a bit better than the base m1?
In short macbooks (even at the lowest tier) are good for mac gaming and almost any mac games , windows gaming on the mac in the other hand is another story lol
Try the new CleanMyMac for free for 7 days using my link clnmy.com/AndrewTsai
Few more games you can try...
1) Tomb Raider
2) Rise of the Tomb Raider.
3) Batman: Arkham City
4) Inside
5) Limbo
6) Undertale
7) Civilization 6
8) Deus Ex
9) Bioshock 1 & 2
10) The Witcher 1 & 2
11) Undertale
12) Ori and the Blind Forest
Also Batman Arkham Knight
don't forget Undertale!
Also Insurgency (2014) which show up as unsupported on Steam but runs perfectly,especially the multiplayer
also try undertale!
I own most of them and they work great.
If you do not have a gaming PC or console, but have an Apple Silicon Mac, give it a shot. I did it and found that more than 90% of my steam library runs on Crossover. Last year i ditched my Mid range PC and upgraded to a M2 Max 38 core and I can even do some 1440p or 4k gaming.
3000+ dollars for the ability to MAYBE play 1440p-4k is unbelievably sad to me
I could make a 4k setup for 3000 including peripherals and monitor.
@@peterkilian9100 don't be silly. The scenario is almost never buying a MacBook to game. A lot of us use a $3-4000 MacBook already as a primary device and would like the option of playing games without having to spend another $3000 on something to game.
@@erikludwig5515
If you want to game as a hobby, you literally could not do worse than macOS. In that “scenario”, a MacBook makes no sense.
The only people that genuinely buy a MacBook for 4k are either those who don’t care for games or morons. There is no middle ground, yet.
@@erikludwig5515 exactly!!
Massive props for making videos about the M1!
such an amazing machine
No it's not? For the same price you have a Windows computer that runs those games better, if you are a gamer there's no reason to buy a Mac?
@@Neosyass Clearly ignoring a lot of context. Who says he thinks it's amazing that it can run those games, or more that it can do all this on 3 year old hardware that's still incredibly battery efficient. Dunno why there's always one of you in the comments. As if we've never seen your train of thought before, lol.
@@Neosyass find me a light weight, fanless, long battery life laptop that can game like MBA. I agree with windows PC, i have 14” M1 Pro MacBook pro and gaming PC too
Longtime Apple user (late 90's), and Apple employee from 2006-2016. This past year I bought a custom built gaming PC for my family room, but I'm still highly interested in what I could do with my M1 MacBook Air (16GB, thankfully).
To date I've been using Steam Link with an 8BitDo controller to play Helldivers 2 in my room in bed after the kids are down. Discord streams the gameplay. Lots of fun this way.
Thanks for putting this together, Andrew.
Not really a gamer here, but ever since owning the M1 MacBook Air, I had purchased Grid Legends and Lies of P. In your video entitled "30 BEST Mac Games on Steam!" you called Lies of P one of the best games of 2023. I am curious to hear your recommendation as it pertains to optimal settings for playback of this game on the M1 MacBook Air.
Yes Lies of P is definitely one of the best games to play on M1 MacBook Air, should've included it if I had more time :).
Here are few more games to try on Mac:
- Borderlands 2
- Disco Elysium (runs really great)
- Deus Ex: making Divided
- Eve Online (perfectly smooth experience)
- World of Warcraft (is a nice optimized one)
- Kerbal Space Program
- Arma 3
- Path of Exile
- Pillars of Eternity 1-2
- Snowunner
- X-Plane 12
- Life is Strange
- Sleeping Dogs
- Song of Conquest
- Planetary Annihilation
- Don't Starve Together
- Bomber Crew
- Desperados 3
- American Truck Simulator
- Euro Truck Simulator
- Terraria
- Surviving Mars
- Dota 2
- League of Legends
- Company of Heroes 2
- Albion Online
- Tabletop Simulator
- Void Bastards
- War Thunder
- World of Tanks
- World of Warships
- Wargame: Red Dragon
- Fishing Planet
Wonderful list! Bro is a real one for including hollow knight🙏
YES I thought the exact same thing! W game, I recommend it to literally everyone
Here's my Steam library of games that run great:
My favorites:
1-Company of heroes 2
2- DAVE THE DIVER, it's great!
3-Disco Elysium, it's great!
4-Divinity Original Sin
5- Hades
6- Civilization VI
7-Slay the Spire
8- XCOM 2
Other Games:
1- Age of Wonders: Planetfall (found it boring, not played it much)
2- The binding of Isaac; Rebirth (great game, specially with a controller).
3- Bloons TD6, great game for casual fun!
4- Dead cells (great game, specially with a controller).
5- Desperados III (great reviews, haven't played it )
6- Don't Starve, great game!
7- Frostpunk is a great game but fps drops a bit sometimes
8- INSCRYPTION, just great!
9- SLEEPING DOGS, great gta-like game with great graphics and stable performance.
My point being, MacOs has some native games running great in steam.
I would like to see the following CAD applications come to mac like solidworks and inventor.
Great video for students. Thanks a lot
Hi, as an Imac M3 8GB this video is really useful too. Maybe I will check my Steam library! Thanks!
More content for the m1 please
Waiting for that Ryu tutorial vid. Andrew never misses!!!🔥🔥🔥
For sparking Zero you can set frame limiter in engine.ini file, that way you will eliminate the slowdowns
No Man's Sky has multiple rendering issues specifically on macOS since the worlds update a few months ago (very distracting full-screen glare, settings being stuck on low despite the UI showing otherwise, missing tessellation, etc.) so I would not recommend that one on macOS sadly nowadays.
I noticed that Celeste starts experiencing serious frame rate drop issues on my M1 MacBook Air with 8GB of RAM after running for a short while, making it very hard to control, especially since the game needs to react immediately. I wonder if anyone else has encountered this problem. I am curious about whether it has something to do with the Rosetta 2 transition layer. Amazing video, btw!
It can be that you have background apps running, or maybe using Parallels desktop, or your system is throttling due to temperature. Also, try updading to macOS 15 Sequoia if you are on ondel os versions.
I can´t wait for M4 Mac mini with 16 gb ram
Surprisingly, Titanfall 2 runs great on mac through CrossOver(tested on m3 max), both the campaign and multi-player.
Wonderful list. M1 is so awesome.
thank you :)
...you should have considered adding The base M1 iMac and Mac Mini in your title......if it runs on the base M1 MBA, it will run even more efficiency on those due to better cooling,
thanks!
How much better is M2 base model than the M1? Like if the M1 runs sparking zero at 50% resolution how much would i have to scale for M2 air base?
Approximately 25% better.
loving the videos dude!
Thanks!
Divinity Original Sin Enhanced Edition runs great and it’s hours of fun (and crafting) ! Give it a try
You can also play warframe on mac m1! You can play it with 40-60 fps on free roam but 60-70 on missions!!!
Great video man ❤
But you forgot about
-Resident evil village
-Rise of the tomb raider
-Shadow of the tomb raider
-
I don't know why no one is mentioning Lies of P, its one of the best games ever made and has a native port so I assume it should work on the base M1. I have a M1 Pro so cant say.
thanks
Do you think they will bring out an actual console next week ?
Improbable but not impossible. If it hapens one day, it will be a version of apple TV, which already is a console in a way.
excellent video !
Thank you, just when I was wonderimg if I can play OW2 on M1Air. I think I might have to go with a used M1PRO. 120hz screen will also be nice.
M1 Pro will run it substantially better on the base M1!
Great video
Can you play project zombie on MacBook Air M1?
make a video on more online games like (smite, warframe and predecessor) there a way to by pass anti cheat 🙏🙏🙏
Could you make a video about the settings you use on your mac? Metro exodus (bought on steam if that makes any difference) is virtually unplayable on my base M2 macbook air, even on low game settings.
Spiderman remastered works fine too
Do I have to pay for the games or emulator or any 3rd party software?
If it is free I might buy M1 air base version
Can you try M3 pro, I'm thinking of getting that
This guy loves his MacBook AAAHHHHHHHH
Hello, are there any solutions to eliminate overheating on air besides energy saving?
Raise the laptop off the table, point a fan at the machine, lower graphics settings, cap framerate or use Vsync.
By the way, can you also compare M1 Max 14", M2 Pro 14" and M3 14" with 16GB in terms of gaming. They all have similar price points. I know it is a lot :))
could i use an external type c ssd to install like gta5? base m1 mini with 256gb is nothing considering macOs partitions too
Which emulator did u use for metro exodus? I tried via crossover and alot of stuttering and lagging. Im using M2 pro though. Should be better than the M1 air.
how's war thunder for the m1 base model as it runs natively I think?
War thunder runs well. It's playable, give it a try.
Dying Light is a MUST PLAY on these machines :)
do you know if mafia 3 and gang beast run well on MacBook Air m1?
Donkey Kong tropical freeze on ryujinx is probably the best game I’ve played on my m1 mba. Runs perfectly
It runs even greater on Cemu (the wii U version).
@@nintendoever it runs above 60fps?
@@SC-sd4nr On M2 Macbook Air yes.
I've enjoyed Alien Isolation on my MacBook.
How is that FPS counter called?
I’m selling my base m1 MacBook Air because my gaming pc has a 4th gen intel and a 1050ti gpu 😢
Little context: 2 years ago I buyed the M1 MBA because PC parts in that year are too expensive and this was the reason why I choose the MacBook but now I need better specs and storage, sadly I can’t upgrade anything in the MacBook so I thing I buy a MacBook Pro later the next year, I really love the Apple Silicon Mac’s
I tried Parallel on my Macbook Pro M2 Max and I found out there's a huge amount of audio delay on every game. Has anyone encountered the same issue??
settings (in game) and crossover for DB sparking zero please
Check this out: ua-cam.com/video/bToCogREPy4/v-deo.html
If you can play GTA offline despite the anti-cheat thing then can you play any football game like EA FC 25? I'm not interested in playing online. Just wanted to play career mode (which is offline).
Have you heard about anyone getting it to work?
I have a m2 air 16 RAM with the 10 core GPU
Nice video! Can run frostpunk 2??
Not very well, Frostpunk 1 works okay though.
Frostpunk 2 has a native Mac version. But developer has recently acknowledged some optimization needed to resolve some performance issues
@@jlewis7221 thankss
Don’t do it with MacBook Air! It’s not designed for consistent high game loads. This thing is capable but it’s boiling hot in games. You will butcher it fast this way. Games are for active cooling solutions only (mac mini/pro/ultra)
Hi, I have Metro Exodus on my Steam. Does that work? (PS: Love your videos)
Can you please do a tutorial on how to install and enable d3d metal toolkit for GTA5?🙏🏻
I've done one here: ua-cam.com/video/p17-JMNZE1w/v-deo.html
@@Andytizer Thank you so much
i know ppl love to tout gaming on a mba... but just don't do it. there is a reason gaming computers have thought-out cooling systems with fans or liquid. i had a mba m3... it got extremely hot just using any browser other than safari.... i can't imagine how hot it gets when running a game... not including playing a game for a few hours.... a sure fire way to prematurely kill a mba, that has minimal cooling, is to game on it. i mean.. to each their own. that said, i'll def try it on my mbp m3pro 16"... since it DOES have fans...
How did you get Overwatch 2 to run on Mac?! I tried to get it to work with both Crossover and Parallels on a M2 16gb MacBook Air and it basically wouldn't work
Did you install Overwatch 2 in its own CrossOver bottle and enable DXVK and Msync?
I have the death stranding on epic games launcher, will it run smoothly if i run through heroic or mythic launcher?
No you need the native version on the App Store.
I have a problem. when I open the game at steam "cities skylines" on my m1 16G Macbook air, it won't run successfully, it will crash.
Do u think GTA 5 will hit mac anytime soon?
Hey, what about Disco Elysium? It is perfectly playable on a base M1 MBA
Yes it is !
And it's one of the best RPG ever made!
Does somebody know how to get Left 4 Dead 2 running with at least 60fps? I tried CrossOver but even on low settings the performance is barely playable.
Two more suggestions:
Project Zomboid
Frostpunk (the first one)
Frostpunk struggles a little bit but is totally playable and worthy
i have latest ryujink on my macbook air m2 16gbRAM with red dead redemption but it always freezes about five minutes into the game... thoughts.. ?
I have the same m2 air 16 RAM and 512GB which comes with the 10 GPU cores instead of 8. Do you have a more curated list of games for it, since it performs a bit better than the base m1?
any fallout games ?
Nice, very nice :))
Can we get video on how to play valorant in macbook
How is Lies of P not on here!???
In short macbooks (even at the lowest tier) are good for mac gaming and almost any mac games ,
windows gaming on the mac in the other hand is another story lol
m3 pro must be much better, maybe try it
finally not high end m3 max cpu...
Henlo
Were you ever able to run Spider-Man on the M1 Mac?
It runs just not very well on 8GB.
Dota 2 runs perfectly
Eve Online
U can play so many games using Android emulator even I tried fortnite it worked fine
@@7blackdogs could you name the emulator?
@@punyamalhotra9941 mumu pro
All are paid games
and it's perfect :)
MacBooks Air and pro are garbage
Is it possible to play battlefield 1 online on macbook pro m1 pro 16GB? Please answer me if anyone can do this.